World-first laws will force social media giants to identify keyboard cowards

Tech giants will be ordered to identify anonymous online trolls or face heavy defamation costs in tough, new, world-first laws that will make them responsible for what they publish.

Anonymous trolls will be unmasked with tough, new, world-first laws that will give Australian courts the power to order social media giants to identify perpetrators or risk incurring hefty defamation payouts.

Under the legislation to be announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday, people who believe they have been defamed online will also be able to get court orders to force social media giants to reveal who is responsible for the posts.

If the social media giants refuse or are unable to identify who made the defamatory comments, then they will have to pay the defamation costs.

Barnaby Joyce, with ex-wife Natalie and their daughter Bridgette, has called for social media giants to protect users while they make themselves ‘rich beyond our comprehension’.

Social media giants will also have to establish online customer shopfronts in Australia to make sure they comply with orders.

Mr Morrison said social media could too often be a cowards’ palace, where the anonymous could bully, harass and ruin lives without consequence.

“We would not accept these faceless attacks in a school, at home, in the office, or on the street. And we must not stand for it online, on our devices and in our homes,” he said, adding that the rules that existed in the real world should exist online too.

The centrepiece crackdown on online trolls will be a change to the law to make it clear social media providers are responsible for payouts arising from defamatory comments on their platform where the troll cannot be identified.

It will also legislate to reverse the recent High Court decision in the Voller case, which found that operators of social media pages were liable for defamatory comments posted on them. Social media companies will be considered the publishers of comments, alongside the commenters themselves.

Trolls falsely accused Ellie Smith and Jake Gliddon of all manner of horrors when their young daughter Cleo Smith vanished in rural WA. They had no involvement in her disappearance.

The changes were heavily backed by Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, whose daughter Bridgette was smeared on Facebook with false allegations she was having an affair with former NSW National Party leader John Barilaro.

Mr Joyce accused social media companies of making billions of dollars “destroying the authentic fourth estate by siphoning off advertising revenue” while destroying people’s lives and saying “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that”.

“I’m going to the (United) States next week to talk about what we can do about this,” he said.

“And something will be done. We will either live in a democracy or a Zuckerbergcy, and our preference is for the former.”

Radio and TV personality Erin Molan has been the victim of a unrelenting threats from online trolls, including some who wished harm on her unborn child.

Trolls will be unmasked in two ways. Social media companies will be compelled to create a complaints scheme which will allow victims to know if comments were made in Australia and, if so, to obtain the contact details of the poster, with their consent.

If that doesn’t work, victims will also be able to seek a new form of court order, to be called an “End-user Information Disclosure Order”, which will allow a social media company to unmask trolls without consent.

The government is highly-aware that most litigants in defamation cases against social media giants will be hopelessly outgunned financially.

To get around that power im­balance it has signalled it is prepared to intervene in defamation disputes involving social media ­companies to support victims, to make it clear to the courts how it thinks the Commonwealth legislation should be applied.